Biodiversity / Biodevastation

The CIP Americas Program has been accompanying the grassroots movement of campesinos, indigenous communities, consumers and scientists to maintain the ban on genetically modified corn for over a decade. The pushback from Monsanto and other biotech companies has been constant, but cross-sector organization has succeeded in protecting Mexico’s native corn and campesino livelihoods from the threat. This report describes the latest developments.

Twenty-two months ago, Mexico became a GM maize-free territory, when a Federal Judge issued the precautionary measure that suspended authorizations to plant any genetically modified seeds of this grain, a staple food in the country, essential to its culture.

The United States Bureau of Prisons is trying to build a new, massive maximum-security prison in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky — and there’s a growing movement to stop it.

The prison industry in the US has grown in leaps and bounds in the past 20 years— a new prison was built at an average rate of one every two weeks in the ’90s, almost entirely in rural communities. As of 2002, there were already more prisoners in this country than farmers. The industry seems like an unstoppable machine, plowing forward at breakneck speed on the path that made the world’s largest prison population.

Some nuclear advocates suggest that wildlife thrives in the highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, animals like it, and not only that, a little radiation for anybody and everybody is harmless and maybe good, not bad. This may seem like a senseless argument to tackle were it not for the persistence of positive-plus commentary by nuke lovers. The public domain deserves better, more studied, more crucial answers.

Fortunately, as well as unfortunately, the world has two major real life archetypes of radiation’s impact on the ecosystem: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl is a sealed-off 30klm restricted zone for the past 30 years because of high radiation levels. Whereas, PM Abe’s government in Japan has already started returning people to formerly restricted zones surrounding the ongoing Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

Conservationists and Indigenous communities share the aim of preserving biodiversity, even if their incentives differ. That creates a grim irony when tribal peoples are estranged from the environment they have safeguarded, for the sake of safeguarding the environment.

New research on how Indigenous communities in Papua province, Indonesia conserve the forest resources they rely on concludes, “The potential tragedy of the unseen sentinels is that so much may be lost simply because we failed to open our eyes to look.”

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GST Editors' Books

In-depth examination of the labor imperialist foreign policy of the AFL and then the AFL-CIO, covering from the late 1800s to 2007. Gives strong overview, and then details specific efforts in Chile in 1973, Philippines in late 1980s, and Venezuela in 2002. Also discusses NED (National Endowment for Democracy and other current operations, as well as details efforts by trade unionists to overturn these policies. Published in hardback in 2010, paperback in 2011 by Lexington Books.

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